Critical Essay by Robin Headlam Wells

In the following essay, Wells claims that in Julius Caesar Shakespeare depicted a Machiavellian view of politics and history.

Why did Shakespeare use stories from the Graeco-Roman world? Machiavelli went to Roman history because he believed that Livy's narratives provided political lessons that could be applied to the modern world. It has traditionally been supposed that Shakespeare dramatized stories from Plutarch and other historians for similar reasons. For the new ‘politic’ historiographers, and, it used to be generally assumed, for Shakespeare as well, the importance of ancient history lay in its ability to illuminate modern events.1 In recent years these assumptions have been challenged by materialist and postmodern scholars who have argued that the supposedly essentialist view...